The present invention is directed to improved means for supporting a musical instrument, and in particular a weighty instrument such as a saxophone, which is supported by the body of a musician for minimizing discomfort to the musician while he is holding the instrument. A saxophone is a weighty instrument, weighing in the order of about five pounds. A musician cannot comfortably sustain the weight of a heavy instrument for long periods of time in the same position so that the mouthpiece remains proximate to the mouth of the musician. It is known to provide an eye on the body of a musical instrument such as a saxophone to enable the eye to be engaged by a hook on a supporting neckstrap worn by the musician. The use of the neckstrap relieves the primary weight of the musical instrument from the arms and hands of the musician, thereby providing the fingers of the musician with greater freedom to operate the keys of the instrument since the hands and arms of the musician are not required to provide the primary support for the instrument. Known neck straps for supporting musical instruments are adjustable to enable the mouthpiece of the instrument to be placed in a fixed position relative to the mouth of the musician for substantially long periods of time. This is possible because the distance from the neck of the musician to the supporting eye on the instrument is relatively fixed and stable, and the distance between the neck and mouth of the musician is also substantially fixed for any given individual. However, even with a neck strap providing the primary support for the musical instrument, after long periods of time, the weight of the instrument bearing down on the back of the neck of the musician becomes tiring and stressful on the muscles surrounding the neck, and also causes the neck strap to press against the carotid arteries of the musician on both sides of the neck. On occasion, the weight of a musical instrument such as a saxophone bearing down on a supporting neckstrap has caused musicians to pass out during playing sessions.
In order to improve the comfort of neck straps for heavy musical instruments, soft padding has been placed around the portion of the strap engaging the neck of the musician, and attempts have been made to redesign the supporting strap as a harness using more of the shoulders for support. While providing a harness to displace the weight of the instrument from the neck to the shoulders of a musician increases the musician's comfort, known harnesses are disadvantageous in certain respects. One of the requirements of playing an instrument is preventing unwanted motion between the mouthpiece of the instrument and the mouth of the musician. Such motion creates unwanted nuances to the tonal quality of the sound. Although the distance from the neck to the mouth or shoulders of a musician can be held steady, known harnesses to date provide no means for maintaining a constant distance between the supporting eye extending from the musical instrument to the shoulder of the musician. The known harnesses are formed from complex configurations of flexible webbing which, after a short period of time, shifts or displaces relative to the body position of a musician because there are no anchors holding any part of the web in a fixed position relative to the body of the musician. An example of a known harness type neck support is marketed under the trademark SLIDER by Slider Straps c/o LM Products 1325 Meridian, Anderson, Ind. 46013 (www.sliderstraps.com). U.S. Pat. No. 4,930,695 discloses another known harness-type strap formed from flexible webbing for supporting a musical instrument. A further disadvantage of the known harness-type supports having flexible webbing for supporting a musical instrument is that the harness can slip or slide off the shoulders of a musician during a performance since the harness includes no positive anchoring structure. Thus, although the known harness-type neck straps for supporting musical instruments improve the comfort to a musician, they nonetheless adversely affect the performance of the musician by requiring the musician to constantly re-position the harness during a performance in order to maintain the mouthpiece at a desired distance relative to the mouth of the musician.
The primary object of the present invention is to overcome the disadvantages of the known harness-type neck straps for supporting musical instruments on the body of a musician, and in particular, heavier musical instruments such as a saxophone.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following discussion in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.